Pre-literate people in New Guinea and Indonesia draw specifically distorted faces, as do 'Western' dyslexics, using a...

Third World populations with a persisting high percentage of preliterates within individual groups draw specifically distorted patterns of the human face characteristic of 'neolithic art' to a degree negatively correlated with the accessibility of reading instruction. A subgroup of 'Western' dyslexic youths also draw these distorted face patterns, which, moreover, facilitate infants 'smiling response'. These findings suggest the persistence of a developmentally early visual representational mode which proceeds in a global way, disregarding differences in characterizing details, whether of face patterns or of lexical symbols.